So let's get this straight -- It's fine to express contempt and hatred for people who try to keep the federal govt from spending us into 3d world misery. It's not okay to express contempt and hatred for people who prey on small children.

I would have no problem with recognizing that pedophilia is not a mental illness, as long as we can preserve or strengthen the standard that acting on the impulse is criminal. After all, there are many criminal acts which are not considered mental illness -- in fact, they are almost mutually exclusive terms, these days. It would be better to consider "minor-attractedness" as not-mentally-ill but wrong, than to allow someday for a mental illness defense against a charge of sexual abuse of a minor.

But falling back on cynicism, if it is legitimated by the mental health "profession", it will probably lead the way to legitimacy in the criminal code.

Let us think about the nature of these sexual relationships, the physical nature. At what age should someone be able to consent to such a relationship? Read the article and the comments. The goal here is not merely to remove the "illness" stigma. The goal is to legalize sexual contact with minors. No.

2) I was a psych major and thought that I would become a practicing psychologist. I'm so glad that I didn't.

3)I feel like I missed something (and don't wish to re-read it)- they want to decriminalize it and not report it when the perp is in treatment, but also want to destigmatize it as a mental illness? If it's an illness, I could (sort of but not really) understand decriminalizing it, in the sense that it should be treated rather than penalized. (I don't agree, but it at least appears rational.) If it's not an illness, then it must either be accepted as normal and victimless behavior, or treated as wrong and penalized. So, assuming that I understood the intent correctly, they're asking for acceptance and for the behavior to be considered OK (and presumably victimless). See above, point one.

4) There are plenty of cases where contempt and hatred are perfectly appropriate, even necessary for a functioning society.

To answer the idiotic rhetorical question - the purpose of labeling this desire a disease is that it cannot be acted on with consenting adults. That seems to be a pretty good definition of a mental illness to me. The purpose of public shaming is to force people to get treatment for the disease.

Also, I tend to reject people claiming that destigmatization of homosexuality leads to things like this- afterall, they are completely different in that homosexuality involves (well, should involve) only consenting adults.

The fact is that if you are sexually attracted to young children, you're a sick fuck, and an even sicker fuck if you act on those attractions. Child molesters are the worst of the worst, and should be locked up for as long as we can possibly arrange.

I will say that there is a legitimate argument to be made that laws like those against cartoons and cgi movies that depict pedophilia but don't involve children are counterproductive or a violation of first amendment principles. But those argument are based on the idea that pedophilia is a disease and these outlets are harmless sublimations of it.

Anyone who would molest or rape a child is a predator and should be held in contempt, particularly if they offend repeatedly and without trying to stop themselves, and the predators themselves should feel intense shame.

While I can accept that people may develop feelings of sexual attraction to children without choosing to have those feelings, (after all, who would want to cultivate such desires in themselves if they were not there innately?), such persons must also be responsible enough such that they do not act on their desires. (And I'd bet there are people out there with attraction to children who would never act on their desires.)

"Anyone who would molest or rape a child is a predator and should be held in contempt, particularly if they offend repeatedly and without trying to stop themselves, and the predators themselves should feel intense shame."

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the urge towards children is either inborn or established at a very young age, therefore more of an illness than anything else.

But, to my mind, urge is a very, very different thing than action. If you cannot control your actions, you cannot be a part of society. Cut yourself off from temptations, check into an institution, have yourself imprisoned, kill yourself if that's what it takes. Even if one can't help the urge, this kind of action has absolutely no excuse.

afterall, they are completely different in that homosexuality involves (well, should involve) only consenting adults.

I don't think there is any conflict, in that I think being attracted to small children is its own thing, and has nothing to do with which sex one is attracted to. (I don't think there is anything strange about being attracted to, say, a 16 year old. You shouldn't act on that interest if you are 40, but biologically I don't think it's strange. Being attracted to a child who has not reached puberty though is very, very wrong).

From the article: B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release."

Interesting. Prison studies were used in the efforts back in the 1970s to remove homosexuality from the list of psychological pathologies.

A NAMBLA slippery slope.

Just think: in a short decade one won't be able to criticize adult-minor sex without being labeled a bigot.

TV sitcoms featuring adult-minor couples will be the wave of Emmy nominations for daring to discuss the burgeoning debate.

A new musical talent called Lady AgAg will feature a song at the Oscars called "Born that way, too".

Will pedophilic clergy be culturally rehabilitated as victims of bigotry?

There was a time, when I was just entering medical school, when I was very interested in psychiatry. I had had a very impressive experience with one in a summer job. Then I met other psychiatrists and realized that I didn't want to be one.

That's why religious indoctrination is the sensible thing to do for children.

The issue isn't whether or not shame (or religion) make rational sense. The issue is what works.

That's why all this BS debate about whether God exists or not misses the point completely. Raising children with the fear of God works. They become better people than those raised without the fear of God.

Since I am sure most prisons have several copies of the DSM and that they are well read and understood by prisoners I think we can assume that child molesters will be treated much better in prison once they can get this through. Perhaps just circulationg this article will help.

"Chester the Molester" was a "Hustler" feature by the cartoonist Dwayne Tinsley - who, ironically enough, did hard time for sexually abusing his own daughter. And, as Pogo says - well, golly! How on earth could we have seen this coming?

Mark Shea, the Catholic apologist, put it best: "The day will come when the Church is condemned, not for failing to prevent pedophilia, but for trying to prevent it."

It serves to invoke shame. Shame is the level of punishment that precedes legal involvement.

In our society, we have moved away from shame as a positive force and it has become itself a dirty and rejected word. But in human society shame has a very strong role in maintaining community standards, encouraging people to police their own behavior so that society does have to enforce it.

They are continuing to prepare the battlefield. It won't work this time, nor the next nor the next nor the next etc. But that's not how or why this fight gets fought. It's the suggestion, repeated and repeated and repeated, that they're not so bad, that you should be ashamed of your emotional gut response, that you're response is not logical. Over time, it puts you/society on the defensive.

I don't know all that much about pedophilia, but this I do know; it hurts children. Sometimes it kills children. It is a pathology and share many traits with other pathologies. MRIs have shown that pedophile brains don't function like normal brains, and have a number of abnormalities.

I recall the story of a man who suffered brain damage due to an accident. After the accident he started going after small children for sexual reasons. He was put on an anti-depressant and his urge for kids stopped. Whenever he stopped taken his medication for any reason his urges returned. If that doesn't tell you something...

A lot of these child molestors were themselves molested as children. I have some sympathy for them, but I don't see how you can allow them full leave to roam. That seems to be their sexual orientation, and some are quite aggressive predators. Perhaps you could parole them to retirement communities in Florida. I think the shame and contempt in which they are held probably inhibits the behavior of many of them. Shame and contempt serves a useful function in this world.

The urge of men to have sex with women regardless of their giving permission is pretty natural and hardly a sickness, but I don't hear anyone suggesting rape should be decriminalized. Natural has nothing to do with it, just as in murder, theft or most any other crime. It's denying others their rights, that's the illegal part, not your urges.

Nietzsche called the "will to power" the basic human personality trait.

The will to self control must be created by an outside authority.

Thus the truism that responsible people need no authority exercised over them, but irresponsible people do.

I have witnessed a community south of Atlanta that was 95% white and most of them church goers change in 10 years to 85% black.

The court house, jails and probation office changed from small, neat and rural to a huge, 1000% larger, operation where the Grounds were abandoned to trash and vandalism. The new residents demanded that outside authority to make their community functional.

Likewise, the abusers of children for sex are not going to stop unless there are parents who want them stopped.

The trouble with this state of perfect freedom that we demand for everyone, even criminals, is that we can't or won't determine if something is a crime until after the act has been committed. Many more children will thus be hurt or killed. But that's okay, right, because, aw, pedophiles are mostly just nice people!

As for normalizing pedophilia, of course people are doing it. Remember Sandy in Glee, the pedophile singing teacher who was on parole and always touching the boys? So funny, so cute! Soon after his introduction, he was cut from the show. I guess Glee finally found out how low it could go--this time.

As for normalizing pedophilia, of course people are doing it. Remember Sandy in Glee, the pedophile singing teacher who was on parole and always touching the boys? So funny, so cute!

He touched a (high school/16-17yo) boy once and was fired for inappropriate behavior with a student. He's not the hero of the show. Glee, at least when it's at its best, is a dark satire, not a warm and fuzzy show, so it is going to have awful people in it.

Oligonicella...What do you want to bet that while abuse of dogs has suddenly become a heinous and serious crime (See, Mike Vick) the sexual abuse of children is only another human need that should not make one into a pervert or criminal.

Where does that change in community morality come from?

I postulate that it comes from trying to make sense out of life on earth without using God's Word given through Moses to steer us into a good moral community.

The oldest form of child abuse was parents offering up new born babies to be burned alive by priests as a sacrifice to the Canaanite god to increase crop harvests for another year.

Then along came Moses and his Torah. Suddenly men, women and children were more important than the local demon gods.

Must we all now become Canaanites again to enjoy a less restrictive sex life?

It is about the choice, the action, not the temptation or urge. But these folks are given over to sin and they just want to incrementally be able to perpetrate children. It is a long strategy and should be called what it is.

A couple of essays speculating on what I find interesting, namely how it is that sexual predators are a huge public problem - supported by what you could characterize as hysteria, which is what makes it interesting - rather than the joke they were before the 70s.

It's not that people were dumber then, just not hysterical. Statuatory rape laws had existed for a long before them, so the crime was recognized.

My own speculation is that an industry arose around the hysteria, in which case we're being collectively had. The OP essay might be looking for a way back, which is not bad to try.

The WSJ's Dorothy Rabinowitz got a couple of Pulitzers exposing the hysteria around 2000 or so, that had to do with prosecutorial career advancement, playing into the public hysteria.

and a chapter from Guggenbuhl-Craig _From the Wrong Side: A paradoxical approach to psychology_, "Myth and Reality of Sexual Abuse of Children", unfortunatly no link, and Amazon doesn't even recognize the book, Spring Publications 1995, that wonders about the inability of audiences to tolerate the idea that there's something to look at here.

The book also has a chapter that I bought it for, "The Blessings of Violence" as well. Who can resist that ad.

I think that adolescent girls should be allowed to have sex if they want it and their parents approve. Girls have not had much time to consider what they need from sex and are unusually easy to trick. But girls have evolved to realize this. If a girl wants sex, it could mean that she was tricked or forced into it, but if it doesn't, then her affection is likely to be extraordinary considering that if her affection were not extraordinary, she would presumably wait to examine her judgment more carefully. It's like buying a new outfit that one sees at a store. If one buys it right away, that is likely to be a sign that the outfit is very desirable, since doubts occasioned by the outfit's undesirability tend to make one want to wait to look at the other outfits and to think about the decision more. Unless, of course, one was manipulated by a pushy salesman.

But there are deeper, underappreciated phenomena going on, I think. Whether someone be morally virtuous tends to be (comparatively) easy to judge; indeed, if it weren't, people would not have evolved to possess unselfish virtue. The reward of being by nature a morally virtuous person is that similarly unselfish, morally virtuous people will love you better on account of recognizing your virtuous nature, and that reward makes up for the unselfishness that by definition is sacrificial. If morality weren't fairly easy to judge, being moral would be such a cross to bear no one would have evolved to have the tendency. Even girls can mostly tell who the good, moral males are. Morally virtuous people don't tend to be skilled at deceptions and very much tend to be honest about everything. So though bad males may get sex from girls because they are deceptive, good males essentially never do. The only reason a good male could tend to get sex from girls as opposed to older females is that he is great. If a girl has sex with a morally virtuous male (who presumably has morally virtuous ancestors), her youth will select in intraejaculate sperm selection for DNA from his ancestors who tended to have sex with girls, which will be his greatest, most desirable DNA, because those ancestors won't likely have been deceptive (remember non-deceptive males who sexually attract girls tend to be great). To sum, girls naturally get real sexual pleasure from moral virtue in their male sex partners in a way that they can't very easily get when older, and since even girls can fairly well judge moral virtue, they tend to more want to have sex with moral males than older female would want. Girls are sexually more innocent in their pleasures than women are, and so those who would deny girls their natural sexual pleasures are denying the most innocent sexual pleasures that exist among people.

Of course, girls really are weaker and more vulnerable to deception and sodomy in particular. Mostly I think that parents should be expected to consent to any sex that young daughters have. Those girls in the 60's who before they changed claimed to believe in youth rights and free love, well, they too often believed in sodomy too. And alas the sodomy mostly they still believe in. They, many of them, they got abused back then and though finally it dawned on them their abusers weren't going to become the great men the sodomy made them out to seem they would be, the new males they later chose too often found it convenient to make them view their youthful mistakes as being something to blame on having had sex too early rather than on having become addicted to sodomy. That way, the new batch of more monetary successful males who outbid their predecessors could keep the sodomy going, much to the their now whorish victims' blessings. So sex with girls is a kind of unusually useful red herring for a fairly large batch of screwed-up people and their (pedantic style) abusers to hold up by way of distracting people from the evils of sodomy.

Maybe the purpose is to accurately describe the action and actor. Some people get off on defending the indefensible and trying to mainstream the marginalized. Sometimes they are on the margins for a reason.

rhhardin, I'm curious whether you're trying to say that this is something that 1) happens, but is rare and people are overly hysterical about (which is probably somewhat true), 2) doesn't really happen (enough to worry about), or 3) happens but is not a big deal and shouldn't be anything to get upset about.

I'd say it happens about as much as it happened when I was a kid, which was not enough to worry about or organize your life around defensively. It was roughly at the level of "Don't take candy from strangers" and that was that.

Which is not the case today.

The world seems hysterical today, so the culture has changed.

To whose benefit, is the question I wonder about, being a cynic about all things TV-initiated.

My guess is some industry has risen around it, which gives it stability. These are the "owners" of the new public problem, which according to sociologist Gusfield is the route to political power.

G-C's offhand suggestion that it has to do with a matriarchy replacing a patriarchy has an intersting side to it.

Above all explain the cultural change first.

The cultural change is playing into something as well. Both vicious dogs and sexual abuse have played to the children.

G-C concludes that the hysteria is from a partial archetype (being a Jungian), that the child figure is completely and absolutely innocent, and so anything bad that happens happens because of absolute evil; which mistake, he says, does not take children seriously as human beings.

Take just that last part: it does seem to me that we kids were taken seriously when I grew up in a way that kids are not now.

Does that relate to escaping mothers? Which we did as kids.

And thus the matriarchy.

Vicious dogs killed less than a dozen kids a year (2 years? not sure which it was) both then and now, which statistically is zero.

Lots of kids bitten, though. Usually boys bitten. The ones who stick their fingers in the dogs' eye. "That's when I learned not to do that."

Ohio's vicious dog law used to say, and may still say, that no dog shall be deemed vicious if it bites while being tormented.

Sorry, but the idea of "normalizing" pedophilia just isn't going to fly with the vast majority of people, myself included.

That being said, I'll go off on a slight tangent/soapbox: *Many* registered sex offenders are so for reasons which are not really legitimate. I agree with the idea that it's wrong to have contempt and hatred towards registered sex offenders - simply because the sentence is misused/overused.

(I do not think it's wrong to have contempt for those who have actually molested a child).

My eye-opener was finding out that two people I know are registered sex offenders. I was shocked - they seemed like normal, upstanding people, how could they be rapists and perverts and pedophiles?

One of them, when in his twenties, had too many beers out with friends, was walking home, and peed on the side of a closed store late at night. Not acceptable behavior, but you know - 20s, too much beer, late night. He got caught relieving himself, and got a citation which through zealous prosecution made him registered sex offender. (Exposing genitals in public, you see, makes this a sex crime). I'm not defending his right to drunken semi-public peeing, but calling him a registered sex offender and making him go around to all the neighbors introducing himself as such (which he did have to do and will have to do any time he moves) seems way out of line.

The other is a 40-something dad who has a 11 year old daughter. The daughter had a school friend, whose mother was addicted to hard drugs and often homeless. When the friend's mother disappeared for several weeks, he let the friend stay in his home (along with his own daughter and wife of course). The thanks he got was to be charged and convicted as a registered sex offender. He had an unrelated/non-custodial minor girl living with him, and that is enough. He was not alone with her. There was not even an allegation of physical or sexual contact with the girl at the trial, simply being in that living situation was sufficient to convict him.

Again I blame a prosecutor that is over-zealous and not using common sense. The girl's mother started the legal process, thinking she'd get drug money out of it. But once the prosecutor was involved, and she realized there wasn't money to be had, she could not drop the charges as it was the state charging him at that point. Also, why is he guilty, but his wife is not? She was just as much a part of it, but was never charged. He is a registered sex offender for life now, and lost his job and his apartment because of it. People don't want to hear an explanation. Luckily his wife, daughter, and friends understand what really happened.

My soapbox basically boils down to: Don't assume a "registered sex offender" is necessarily an evil to be hated. Those who do commit an actual sexual offense, yes - but there are a lot of people on that list due to some technicality, rather than due to some valid reason.

"Sorry, but the idea of "normalizing" pedophilia just isn't going to fly with the vast majority of people, myself included."

Watch. It could happen.Not too long ago, "pedophilia" was no big deal anywhere. It still is normal or at least unquestioned in some parts of the world. Obviously, the idea of your kid getting screwed by some awful perv deviant would send anyone into a rage, but I submit that the societal hysteria about pedophilia is not generated by a revulsion against child sex per se (see, e.g., fashion mags, gossip rags, various movies) but by contempt for the Church and other selected symbols of authority.

Also, prosecutors totally target sex offenses. They're high profile, easy to prosecute, low hanging fruit, with great publicity.Prosecutors abuse their position and overprosecute for just these reasons. Don't even bother denying this, any prosecutors out there. You know it's true.

Because it used to be no big deal.Except to the people it happened to, especially depending on its severity and the length of time they experienced it. And their families (not that it doesn't happen within families too).

But in terms of the general public, yes, it wasn't discussed nearly as much - they also didn't have our mass media and the internet where you can read these stories from newspapers in every town in the US and around the world, including those places where it's more legitimized.

It still is normal or at least unquestioned in some parts of the world.This might also be a part of what fuels any hysteria in places where it isn't normal. People here see that it's an age-old human impulse, at times legitimized in society (with the victims being both girls and boys, in different ways), and so this impulse must always be simmering just beneath the surface in our own corner of the world, human nature being what it is. Hence the need for constant vigilance...

A separate idea that sometimes comes out in these types of arguments is that in those parts of the world the child really doesn't suffer because no one is telling the child it's a bad thing. I'm not saying this is what people are arguing here on this thread, but it's something I've seen elsewhere - that if only it were normalized, then adult-child relations wouldn't be a cause of potential great trauma and pain to victim. Given what I've read of children who have had sex inflicted on them by adults in places where it is more normalized (including accounts from the children themselves, like those who escaped from such situations), this is largely wishful thinking for some people.

but I submit that the societal hysteria about pedophilia is not generated by a revulsion against child sex per se (see, e.g., fashion mags, gossip rags, various movies)That's interesting to consider; the more we're sexualizing children, the more we feel a hysterical panic as a society... are people worried that the fantasies of the media will have an effect on encouraging the reality of pedophila? Is that even the case? (I mean, pedophiles find anything with children enticing - not just fashion mags and movies that have a sexual edge, but anything that other people would see as an innocent picture of a kid).

The societal revulsion as you put it might not exist when it comes to the fantasy of extreme youth and sex. The reality of it on the other hand, the messiness and painfulness of it, is almost never like the fantasy. People know it and are afraid maybe as a society.

HKatz, the point I was making does not contradict the FACT that pedophiles are dangerous and destructive. That is unquestioned. The point was that the effort to normalize, as referenced in the article, is not so farfetched and don't think it can't happen. It's how people like this work, drop by drop. A hint here, an accusation there, and suddenly you're being told to be nice to the pedophiles, to understand and sympathize with their struggle. Once the hysteria, which was generated not by revulsion against pedophilia generally but by hatred and resentment of authority, they'll be back.